The present invention faces in principle the problem of performing the coupling between optical fibres and opto-electronic components, in particular transmitters and/or receivers of the optical signal sent into the fibre.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a method of coupling optical fibres and opto-electronic components, according to the preamble of claim 1. A method of this kind is known for instance from the paper by Holger Karstensen et alii xe2x80x9cParallel Optical Link (PAROLI) for Multichannel Gigabit Rate Interconnectionsxe2x80x9d presented at the 1998 Electronics Components and Technology Conference and published on the relating proceedings, pages 747 to 754.
The main drawback of that solution according to the state of the art is due to the intrinsic difficulties of obtaining, in a simple, fast and reliable way, a precise coupling between the optical fibres (usually arranged in a multifibre ribbon cable) and the opto-electronic component (typically formed, in the case of a transmitter, by a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) or, in the case of a receiver; by a structurally equivalent device. In practice, the known method envisages that the coupling must be performed by maximising the optical power coupled between the opto-electronic device and the fibre during the assembling operation (active alignment).
On this respect it must also be considered that the opto-electronic component (whether a transmitter or a receiver) is usually associated to a driving/processing circuit, which should be seen as advantageously integrated with the rest of the device.
The present invention aims at providing a solution that, on one hand, does away with the drawbacks of the known technique, and allows, on the other, to easily achieve the integration targets which have been previously mentioned.
According to this invention, said aim is achieved by virtue of a method having the additional characteristics recalled in claim 1. The invention also concerns the relating device.